Contents

Description

The Advanced XIP File System is a Linux kernel filesystem driver that enables files to be executed directly from flash or ROM memory rather than being copied into RAM.

This is a new project started by engineers working at Intel. It is intended to be a replacement for Linear XIP CRAMFS. The advantage over existing solutions is that it can provide reduced RAM with less Flash because it is possible to compress only those pages that contribute to RAM savings. It includes tools to identify pages that should be uncompressed. It is Beta quality as of July 2006.

Rationale

This feature is important because XIP is a very common method of conserving RAM on an embedded system.

Specifications

Downloads

Patch

Utility programs

How To Use

How to validate

[put references to test plans, scripts, methods, etc. here]

Sample Results

[Examples of use with measurement of the effects.]

Case Study 1

Case Study 2

Status

Jared Hulbert of Intel writes (in July 2006):

The filesystem is working well. We optimized an Opie Linux build using cramfs and axfs. The resulting images where 49MB XIP cramfs, XIP axfs used only 39MB, and 34MB for a fully compressed cramfs. We're polishing it up for release hopefully in the next couple weeks. We are also debugging a 2.4 port which we will make available as well.